Letters to the editor, October 15

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Denton Record-Chronicle

Published: 15 October 2013 06:29 AM

Thinking problem

Our founders saw Congress (House and Senate) as the most important branch of government. Article I of the Constitution addresses Congress, giving it “All legislative powers” to create our nation’s laws.

Article II addresses the president and begins, “The executive power shall be vested in a president,” who is required to “take care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

The purpose of presidents, then, is executing and carrying out the laws created by Congress.

The president’s oath of office has him promise to “faithfully execute the office of president ... and ... [to] preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.”

We now have a president who has promised to preserve, protect and defend our Constitution, which requires him to carry out laws created by Congress. But he picks and chooses which laws and parts of laws he carries out, from Obamacare to federal drug laws.

We have a president who has promised to preserve, protect and defend our Constitution. But he creates laws on his own with arbitrary executive orders and bureaucratic decrees, although our Constitution has Congress create laws, not him.

Do we want rule of law or rule of presidential whim?

We have a name for leaders who give orders and rule as they wish, regardless of the oath they have taken, regardless of law.

But the problem isn’t our current president. The problem is morally certain totalitarian leftist thinking. Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and other leftist Democrats would do the same thing.